The Byzantine World: Faith and Power in a Thousand-Year Empire

Catalog description

Surveys the history and civilization of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire from its separation from the Western Roman Empire in AD 285 to the fall of the last Byzantine successor state, the Empire of Trebizond, in 1461. The long-lasting Byzantine Empire was a strange mixture of the vigorous and the decadent, the religious and the pragmatic, and the exotic and the familiar. We will also discuss several of the great works of Byzantine literature, including St. Athanasius' supernatural Life of St. Anthony, Procopius' scandalous Secret History, the heroic epic Digenes Akrites, and Michael Psellus' brilliant Fourteen Byzantine Rulers.